Harmful Politicization of Science - Hoover Institution · ONE Harmful Politicization of Science WILLIAM HAPPER Politicization is inevitable when governments provide funding for science

ONE

HarmfulPoliticization

of Science

WILLIAM HAPPER

Politicization is inevitable when governments provide fundingfor science. The public expects to get something back from thescience they support——for example, better health, national secu-rity, jobs. This normal politicization does no harm and may evenbe good for science and society. But politicization taken to theextreme can be very harmful. In extreme politicization, govern-ments or powerful advocacy groups use science and scientistswho share or benefit from the politicization to drive science outof technical decisions and to promote a nonscientific agenda.

My discussion of politicization of science begins with whatmust be its most extreme manifestation, when the Soviet Unionused denial of income, imprisonment, and execution to imposeits political will on the science of biology. The same desires forwealth, recognition, and power that propelled the politicization

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of Soviet biology exist in our democracy, but tyranny is absent. Inits place, those who seek to politicizescience here attempt to divertfederal research funds to their ends and to stifle dissenting opin-ions, using the power of the press, congressional hearings, andappeals to patriotism.

The proponents of cold fusion in the United States used allthose means in their quest for money and fame and standing. Inthe end, they failed because their claims were shown to be basedon corrupt or misinterpreted experiments. While the debate wasgoing on, at least one politician testified that scientists who ex-pressed skepticism about cold fusion were unpatriotically inhib-iting pursuit of the most important scientific breakthrough sincethe invention of fire. Worse, those who stood in the way of coldfusion were delaying development of a scientific breakthroughthat would reverse many of the world’s environmental problemsbecause it would provide pollution-free energy.

Protection and improvement of the environment are now thesiren song of politicians, businessmen, and scientists who claimthat their conclusions about global climate change and their pro-posals to stave off catastrophic change are the only thing standingbetween mankind and a bleak, blasted planet in the future. Theyhave, to some degree, succeeded in strangling the flow of researchmoney to scientists who question their conclusions and prescrip-tions.

In my own case, I lost a federal position because of citingscientific research findings that undermined a politician’s rheto-ric. I did not suffer for my actions as did the Soviet biologists, butmy dismissal surely serves as a warning to other governmentscientists and, perhaps more importantly, to nongovernment sci-entists who act as advisers to the government, that politics cantrump science even in purely technical topics.

The politicization of science is impossible without the partic-ipation of some scientists in it. Politicians in both tyrannies and


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democracies are susceptible to scientists who say that they canshow the way to manage nature without all the complicated bag-gage of ordinary science. How attractive the bright, adventurous,and brave individualsare who cast off the burdensomelimitationsof facts and theory that constrain the scientists who disagree withthem. But politicians and citizens alike should question scientistswho are unwilling to subject their observations and theories toindependent tests, and their ideas and conclusions to discussionamong technically qualified peers. Unhappily for society, suchscientists, with sufficient political backing, can subvert the fund-ing process so that information critical to their claims cannot bedeveloped. At the present time, it is very difficult to obtain funding,either from U.S. governmental sources or from private founda-tions, for research that does not presuppose impending environ-mental doom. Suggestions that moderate global warming mayactually be a good thing for humanity are treated with ridiculeand hostility.

Lysenko’s Destruction ofBiology in the Soviet Union

Some of the worst consequences of politicized science have comefrom the seemingly noble aim of improving human well-being.Those who promise to circumvent the limitations that scientificlaws place on human existence can always count on adulation,power, and wealth. A particularly egregious and well-docu-mented example of this was Trofim Lysenko’s destruction of bi-ology in the Soviet Union. From the time he burst into public viewin 1928 until the downfall of Khrushchev in 1964, Lysenko re-placed real biology in the Soviet Union with falsehoods, prisons,and executions. Many details about Lysenko’s career can be foundin the excellent books by Valery N. Soyfer, Power and Science (inRussian), and Lysenko and the Tragedy of Soviet Science (in En-


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glish).1 A “people’s academic,” Trofim Lysenko promised to rev-olutionize the laws of agriculture, just as his Communist masterswere trying to revolutionize human society.

The Soviet Union forciblycollectivizedagriculturein 1928andforced peasants to surrender their land, livestock, and machineryand to join collective farms. All grain was confiscated from thepeasants, even grain needed for planting the following year’scrops. Massive famines followed in 1929 and the early 1930s.Several million peasants starved to death in the Ukraine, and theRed Army was used to collect the grain harvest, such as it was,because whole villages had perished from hunger.

Hard-working and successful small farmers remained pro-ductive and were an affront to Soviet collectivism. Referring tothese enterprising farmers as kulaks (clenched fist in Russian),Stalin orchestrated the “liquidation of kulaks as a class.”Thousands were executed, and millions were deported to Siberiaor Central Asia.

To try to cope with the disastrous effects of collectivization,the Communist Party ordered the rapid development of moreproductive varieties of wheat and other important crops. It im-posed impossible demands on agricultural research institutionsto improve (within one year) crop yields, resistance to diseasesand pests, ease of harvest, food value, and so on.

The plant breeders and geneticists of the Soviet Union weresome of the best in the world. Moreover, they had some of thefinest genetic pools of wheat to start with; indeed, wheat varietiesof Russian ancestrywere the sources of the most productivewheatstrains grown in the United States and Canada.

With the best of planning and luck, the time scale for intro-

1. V. N. Soyfer, Vlast’ i Nauka (Power and Science) (Tenafly, N.J.: Her-mitage Press, 1988); V. N. Soyfer, Lysenko and the Tragedy of Soviet Science(New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1994).


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ducing effective new varieties is much longer than one year. Sev-eral years are needed to evaluate hybrids or to select varietieswith desirable properties. More years are needed to produce suf-ficient seed for massive plantings. Lenin himself, responding to acomplaint by the Russian author Gorky about the arrest of intel-lectuals, replied, “In fact, they are not the brain of the nation, butshit.”2 So it was not surprising that both the popular and the sci-entific press labeled those hapless Russian agronomists whopointed out the impossibility of producing effective new plantvarieties in one year as “enemies of the Soviet people.”

No wonder the Communists paid attention when young Tro-fim Lysenko declared that the genetics of Mendel’s peas and Mor-gan’s fruit flies was incorrect and simply a capitalist plot to exploitthe peasants and working class. Lysenko believed that environ-mental factors determined the performance of plants and thatacquired characteristicscould be inherited. Having unmasked theevil Western myth of gene-based inheritance, Lysenko promisedalmost instant improvements in agricultural production.

Lysenko’s origins——a peasant background, and little educa-tion——helped him avoid the hatred of the Soviet authorities for theintelligentsia. He first became famous in 1928 by claiming that aseries of simple steps, within reach of any farmer,produced mark-edly improved yields of wheat. All that was necessary was “ver-nalization”——soaking winter-wheat seed in the fall, burying it insacks under the snow, and planting it in the spring like ordinaryspring wheat. This was all a fraud, supported by corrupted ex-periments and falsified statistics.

Stalin himself joined the fray, praising Lysenko and his peo-ple’s scientists, and dismissing as old-fashioned and counterrev-olutionary those who believed in genes. Many opportunistic bi-ologists hopped on the Lysenko bandwagon, and he and his

2. Soyfer, Vlast’ i Nauka, p. 6.



supporters founded Scientific Institutesof Vernalization,while hisdisciples took over existing institutions. Some brave Soviet biol-ogists opposed Lysenko and many paid for this with their jobs oreven their lives. N. I. Vavilov, a plant breeder of internationalrenown, died in prison. Others were simply shot.

Honest scientists from other disciplines were alarmed aboutwhat was happening, but for many years they did little to interfere.By the outbreak of World War II, Lysenko and his henchmen werein full control of biology in the Soviet Academy of Sciences.

During the war, Lysenko’s younger brother Pavel, a scientificworker in Kharkov, defected to the Germans when they overranthe city. The younger Lysenko so impressed the German occu-pation forces that they named him mayor of occupied Kharkov.After the defeat of the Germans, Pavel managed to escape to theWest and he made unflattering comments about the Soviet Unionin Voice of America broadcasts. This made Trofim “a family mem-ber of an enemy of the people,” a criminal offense in the SovietUnion. At about this same time, many in the top levels of the Sovietgovernment were beginning to realize that Lysenko was a fraudwho had done much damage to the Soviet Union. Lysenko’s holdon Soviet biology weakened as articles in both the popular andscientific press began to assert that chromosomesand genes reallydid have something to do with inheritance and were importantfactors in practical agricultural science.

But Lysenko was not so easily defeated. By great good luck hewas saved by Stalin himself. Someone had sent Stalin samples ofbranched wheat from his home republic of Georgia. Up to sevenears would grow on each stalk of this wheat, and Stalin was con-vinced that widespread planting of branched wheat would be thesolution to the periodic crop failures and famines that still plaguedthe Soviet Union. Stalin invited Lysenko to visit him in his office,gave Lysenko a handful of seeds of the branched wheat, and or-dered him to improve the wheat and make enough seed for the


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entire country. This Lysenko cheerfully promised to do, and aspart of the bargain, he gained permission to deal once and for allwith his remaining scientific enemies.

With Stalin’s support Lysenko carefully orchestrated a trapfor his opponents during the meeting of the All-Union Academyof Agricultural Sciences in August 1948. Lysenko’s agents en-couraged the few remaining honest geneticists to speak up infavor of genes and chromosomes. On the last day of the conferenceLysenko stunned the conference by announcing that Stalin him-self had decreed that henceforth there would be only one ap-proved biology in the Soviet union, that of Lysenko. From thenon, taking genes and chromosomes seriously was tantamount totreason.

In the aftermath of the 1948 conference, most of the remaininghonest geneticists in the Soviet Union were fired from their jobsand replaced by Lysenko’s proteges. The famous branched wheatthat gained Stalin’s support for Lysenko turned out to give muchpoorer yields than ordinary, unbranched wheat, but with Stalin’ssupport, this was no problem for Lysenko. After Stalin’s death, itwas not long before Lysenko hypnotized his successor, NikitaKhrushchev, who provided the same top-level political supportto which Lysenko had become accustomed.

In spite of Lysenko’s complete triumph over his scientific en-emies in 1948, it was increasingly clear to objective observers inthe Soviet Union and abroad that Lysenko’s bizarre agriculturalpractices, together with the disincentives of Soviet economic pol-icies, were ruining Soviet food production. Nevertheless, Lysenkocontinued to enjoy the full support of the leadership of the Com-munist Party, and no biologists who disagreed with him remainedin any position to challenge or question him. The only effectivescientific opposition came from outside biology.

The physicists Peter Kapitza, who later won a Nobel Prize forhis work on low-temperature physics, Igor Tamm, and Andrei



Sakharov were some of the most fearless defenders of honestgenetics. Lysenko hated them all, but Tamm and Sakharov werecredited with the invention of the Soviet hydrogen bomb, andLysenko did not have sufficient politicalpower to have them jailedor shot, as he had done with his opponents in the field of biology.In 1964, Tamm and Sakharov led a successful campaign to thwartLysenko’s attempt to pack the Soviet Academy of Sciences withhis cronies. This so infuriated Khrushchev that he decided todissolve the Academy of Sciences. Luckily for Soviet science,Khrushchev was so confident of success that he took a vacationbefore completing his dismantlementof the Academy. On October14, 1964, Anastas I. Mikoyan and an impressive contingent of RedArmy generals showed up at Khrushchev’s vacation spot andannounced that he, Khrushchev, had just retired and would bedrawing his pension from now on. So the “Little October Revo-lution,” as the Russians like to call this episode, saved Soviet sci-ence from Lysenko.

The Lysenko episode shows that an entire scientific disciplinecan be destroyed if the attractionsof false science are great enoughand if its proponents are ruthless enough. The great Russian po-etess Anna Axmatova, who lost her husband and nearly lost herson, a distinguished historian, to Stalin’s executioners, in a fewlines of verse summarizes the tragedies Lysenko and other op-portunists brought to Russia:

to the defenders of stalin

Those are the ones who shouted,“release Barrabas to us for our holiday,”those who commanded Socrates to drink the hemlockin the dim confines of the dungeon.We should pour out the same drink for them,in their innocent, slandering mouths,


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these amiable lovers of tortures,these experts in the production of orphans.3

The Lysenko affair is one of the most thoroughly documentedand horrifying examples of the politicization of science, but nocountry or age is immune. In totalitarian societies politicized sci-ence often leads to tragedy; in democratic societies politicizedscience often ends in wasted time and effort and sometimes infarce.

To illustrate the different histories of politicized science intotalitarian societies and democracies, I will compare Lysenko’sbiology in the Soviet Union with the history of “cold fusion” in theUnited States. Most of my discussion of cold fusion has been takenfrom the excellent book by John Huizenga, Cold Fusion: The Sci-entific Fiasco of the Century.4

Cold Fusion

What can be more annoying than the difficulty of getting con-trolled fusion energy on earth? If we could only figure out how todo it, we could provide the world’s energy needs indefinitely withthe practically inexhaustible supplies of deuterium and lithiumavailable in the oceans. We know how to get large amounts ofenergy from fusing deuterium and tritium nuclei in a thermonu-clear weapon. But after nearly fifty years of hard work and largeexpenditures of research funds, the world has yet to harness fu-sion energy to generate electrical power. Magnetic fusion devicesare large, costly, and still far from practical; imploding small sam-

3. A. Axmatova, Stikhov Moikh Belaya Staya (The White Flock of MyVerses) (Moscow: Exmo Press, 2000).

4. John R. Huizenga, Cold Fusion: The Scientific Fiasco of the Century(Rochester, N.Y.: University of Rochester Press, 1992).



ples of deuterium and tritium gas with large lasers also still has along way to go before it can be a practical energy source.5

In light of the great effort and limited results, Professor B.Stanley Pons and his colleague, Dr. Martin Fleischman, surprisedthe whole world on March 23, 1989. Pons, chairman of the Chem-istry Department at the University of Utah, and Fleischman, adistinguished electrochemist from England, announced that theyhad observed the generation of substantial heat from deuteriumnuclei fusing in the palladium electrodes of electrochemical cellsunder the benign conditions of temperature and pressure foundin an ordinary room. Television and newspapers trumpeted “con-trolled fusion in a fruit jar,” in glowing terms all over the world.

Pons and Fleischman had not submitted a scientific paperabout their discovery at the time of their press conference, so itwas very hard for other scientists to judge the claims, but as detailsbegan to leak out, there was skepticism in the nuclear physicscommunity, even as many other scientists and the public at largewere greatly enthusiastic.

There were many parallels to Lysenko’s vernalization an-nouncements in 1928. The simplicity and importance of the coldfusion process intoxicated the press. Eager scientific imitatorshurried to join the bandwagon. And there was soon high-levelpolitical attention. President George Bush asked for advice fromGlen Seaborg, the great nuclear chemist who discovered pluto-nium. Seaborg gave a sober briefing to President Bush, and hestressed the inconsistency of the claimed results with fifty yearsof painstaking work in nuclear physics.

Whatever his opinion of Seaborg’s analysis, President Bushrealized that cold fusion, if true, would be a revolution of greatimportance to the United States and to the world. Unlike Stalin,who immediately embraced Lysenko, Bush directed that a panel

5. H. Furth, “Fusion,” Scientific American, September 1996.


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of scientific experts be established to investigate the claims. Thenuclear chemist John Huizenga and the physicist Norman Ram-sey chaired the panel, and I was a member of it.

The potential for commercialization of cold fusion was animportant consideration from the very start of the cold fusionepisode, and patent considerations may have influenced the tim-ing of the first press conference. Many people——Pons and Fleisch-man, the University of Utah, and various imitators——hoped to getfabulously wealthy from this wonderfulnew energy source. Muchas Lysenko had managed to get a hearing at the highest levels ofthe Soviet Union, Pons and Fleischman were granted a hearingby the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology of the U.S.Congress on April 26, 1989, barely a month after their cold fusionpress conference.6 Opening the hearing, the committee chairman,Congressman Robert A. Roe of New Jersey, said, “The potentialimplications of a scientific breakthrough that can produce coldfusion are, at the least, spectacular.” Many other committee mem-bers, both Democrats and Republicans, made similar enthusiasticcomments.

Dr. Chase N. Peterson, the president of the University of Utah,made a point very similar to some made by Lysenko about whyradicallynew discoverieswere prone to happen far from the dead-ening restraints of establishment science:

A capacity to see an old problem from new perspectives wasrequired. Chemists, electrochemists, looked at a problem tra-ditionally reserved to physicists. In fact therein lies some ofthe humor and bite of the scientific controversy that is raging.I would like to think that it may not be by chance that ithappened in Utah, at a university which has encouragedunorthodox thinking while being viewed by the world as a

6. “Recent Developments in Fusion Energy Research,” 101st Cong., 1stsess., April 26, 1989; no. 46.



conservative, even socially orthodox place. There in fact maybe something valuable in isolation from more traditionalcenters. America has prospered and innovated at the frontierand the University of Utah is still a frontier that attracts fac-ulty who highly value their intellectual freedom.7

One of the most interesting witnesses was Ira C. Magaziner,who later gained fame as the architect of President William Clin-ton’s ill-fated health care plan. At the time of the congressionalhearings on cold fusion, Mr. Magaziner was president of the man-agement consulting firm TELESIS, USA, Inc. In introducing hisconsultant Magaziner to the committee, Peterson described himas “one of the world’s renowned business consultants on issuesof world competition.” After a rousing sales pitch to convinceCongress to send $25 million immediately to the University ofUtah, Magaziner summarized with an appeal to patriotism:

So now I hope you can understand why I came here today,even though I am not from Utah and have no interest inpalladium. I have an interest in America’s future. I see thisas an opportunity for America both to develop this scienceinto future American prosperity and also to develop a modelfor how America can regain preeminence in commercializ-ing other new sciences in the coming decade.

I have come here today to ask you to prevent another TVor VCR or computerized machine tool or solar cell or super-conductor story. I have come to ask you to lead so that wewill not be the first of our nation’s ten generations to leaveits children a country less prosperous than the one it inher-ited. I have come here to ask you, for the sake of my childrenand all of America’s next generation to have America do itright this time.8

In spite of Magaziner’s testimony and a well-orchestrated

7. Ibid.8. Huizenga, Cold Fusion, p. 51.


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campaign to begin a crash program in cold fusion, sober skepticsconvinced the U.S. Congress to resist appropriating massive newfunds. The furor died down and the enthusiasm for supportingthe research ebbed as weeks and months went by and many lab-oratories reported that they could not reproduce the results ofPons and Fleischman and other embarrassed laboratories with-drew hasty but mistaken confirmations of their results.

A few loyalists still maintain that a sinister conspiracy by biggovernment and industry killed cold fusion, but cold fusion wasthoroughly discredited in society at large. Unlike the Lysenkoaffair, there was no all-powerfulpolitical establishment that coulddeclare cold fusion to be politically correct or incorrect and itsopponents enemies of the people.

Before ending the discussion of cold fusion, let me cite Rep-resentative Wayne Owens, representing Utah’s Second District,who also testified at congressional hearing:

Some say solid-state fusion may be man’s greatest discoverysince fire. Others say, as I do, that it may also be the innova-tion to protect and perpetuate the Earth’s dying life supportsystem, more important than the possible salvation of thedying industrial superiority of America. Man cannot standanother century like the last. In those 100 years, we haveconsumed more of the nonrenewable richness of the Earththan was used during all of man’s previous history. We pol-luted and poisoned our environment with its use, and it lit-erally threatens our continued existence. The revolutionarydiscovery, solid state fusion, arrives simultaneously with ourentry into the age of true environmental alarm. So, burstingwith pride, Utah’s Congressional Delegation brings to thecommittee the prospect of a second economic chance and asecond environmental opportunity. This morning we tell younot only of the discovery which may revolutionize theworld’s energy system, but more importantly, it may be theanswer to the preservation of our home, Planet Earth. Within



the next two weeks, the United Utah Congressional Delega-tion will present you with an innovative legislative plan, onewhich will precipitate a whole new concept for national part-nership for action. It will combine private and public invest-ment and the opportunity for America to develop, engineerand champion the most far-reaching innovation of our time.9

Samuel Johnson once commented that “patriotism is the lastrefuge of a scoundrel.” In their enthusiastic testimony, the sup-porters of cold fusion made ample use of patriotism, but as Rep-resentative Owens’s statements show, “preservation of our home,Planet Earth” was also a favored theme. What might Samuel John-son have said about extreme environmentalism,which is my finalexample of politicized science?

Extreme Environmentalism

Most Americans want to protect the environment and think ofthemselves as moderate environmentalists.As a country, we havemade much progress in protectingand restoring the environment.Our rivers and air are cleaner than they have been for over ahundred years. Increasingly large areas of land are being set asideas wilderness. Our forests are growing back. But even as we cleanup and protect the environment, “environmentalism” has at-tracted some whose motives——fame, power, wealth——are hard todistinguish from those of Lysenko or the cold fusion enthusiasts.

Unlike Lysenko’s vernalized wheat, or cold fusion in a fruitjar, environmental issues are harder to dismiss as patent non-sense. Anyone can see that dumping raw sewage into a riverdegrades the downstreamwaterquality.But how is one to respondto much subtler claims——that magnetic fields from electricalpower lines cause childhood leukemia, that freon will destroy the

9. “Recent Developments in Fusion Energy Research.”


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ozone layer and ultimately life on earth, that pestilence, famine,rising sea levels, or worse will come from increasing atmosphericcarbon dioxide and global warming? These are only some of ex-aggeratedenvironmental fearspromotedby one group or another.

Changes in environmental conditions are not easy to detect,as demonstrated by the massive outlays of research money todevelop and maintain devices to measure them. Even with thebest instruments, the great natural variability in what can be mea-sured can mask the smaller changes that are of interest to thosestudying possible human-caused effects. In light of these difficul-ties, the average citizen must hope that scientific specialists givecorrect advice on important policy issues. But scientists makemistakes. If they don’t make mistakes, they are not trying hardenough. Mistakes get corrected in the normal course of scienceas attempts are made to repeat the experiments, and conclusionsare corrected or reinterpreted if appropriate.

Even without political malice, such as Lysenko’s, which crip-pled Soviet biology, correction of a scientific mistake can takemany years. A good example is the nineteenth-century disputeabout the age of the earth and the sun. On one side were physicists,and on the other, geologists and evolutionists. The Scottish phys-icist William Thomson, later to become Lord Kelvin, had firstarticulated the second law of thermodynamics, which says thatthe entropy of the universe cannot decrease. So it was natural forhim to use thermodynamic considerations for age estimates.From measurements in mine shafts, he knew that the temperatureof the earth increased by 2 or 3 degrees C per 100 meters of in-creasing depth. So heat had to be flowing to the surface of theearth from the hot interior, since heat naturally flows fromwarmer to cooler regions, or the second law of thermodynamicswould be violated. Assuming that the earth had cooled by con-duction of heat, and that there were no sources of heat inside the



earth, Kelvin was able to estimate that the earth must have beenmolten no more than 98 million years ago.

Kelvin also used thermodynamics arguments to estimate theage of the sun. Supposedly, the sun was formed from accumulat-ing “meteors,” and Kelvin therefore called his theory of the sun’senergy “the meteoric theory.” As the meteors that formed the sungradually collapsed to smaller and smaller volumes under theinfluence of their gravitational attraction for each other, they be-came hotter and hotter and this provided the heat for the sunlight.Kelvin’s theory, published in 1900, reflected forty years of study:

That some form of the meteoric theory is certainly the trueand complete explanation of solar heat can scarcely bedoubted, when the following reasons are considered: (1) Noother natural explanation, except by chemical action, can beconceived. (2) The chemical theory is quite insufficient, be-cause the most energetic chemical action we know, takingplace between substances amounting to the whole sun’smass, would only generate about 3,000 years’ heat. (3) Thereis no difficulty in accounting for 20,000,000 years’ heat by themeteoric theory.10

While 20 million years seems like a long time, Charles Dar-win, supported by geologists, had estimated that some 300 millionyears were required to account for geological processes, like theerosional formation of the “Weald,” a large valley across the southof England.11 Even longer times seemed to be needed to explainother geological observations. And the theory of evolution alsorequired times much longer than Kelvin’s estimates.

In the end, Kelvin, the great mathematical physicist and pres-ident of the Royal Society, was wrong, and Darwin and the geol-

10. Sir William Thomson, Lord Kelvin, “The Age of the Sun’s Heat,” inEssays in Astronomy, ed. Edward Singleton Holden (New York: D. Appletonand Co., 1900), p. 51.

11. Ibid.


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ogists were right. The earth is around 4.5 billion years old. UnlikeDarwin and his geologist friends, who based their estimates of theearth’s age on observed erosion rates and other empirical evi-dence, Kelvin relied on models, for which the mathematics wasimpeccable,but some of the fundamentalphysics was incomplete.Commenting on Darwin’s age estimates, Kelvin says:

What, then are we to think of such geological estimates as300,000,000 years for the “denudation of the Weald”?Whether is it more probable that the physical conditions ofthe sun’s matter differ 1,000 times more than dynamics com-pel us to suppose they differ from those of matter in ourlaboratories;or that a stormy sea, with possiblyChannel tidesof extreme violence, should encroach on a chalk cliff 1,000times more rapidly than Mr. Darwin’s estimate of one inchper century.12

Contrary to Kelvin’sconfidence thatmatter in the sun behavedlike matter in his laboratory, the matter in the sun is subject tonuclear interactions, which do not occur at the low temperaturesand pressures of the earth. Neither Kelvin nor anyone else knewanything about the atomic nucleus. The first inklings of nuclearphysics had shown up only four years before Kelvin’s rather pom-pous dismissal of the geological evidence for the antiquity of theearth. In 1896 Becquerel discovered that uranium and a few otherelements are radioactive. Although not recognized until Ruther-ford’s brilliant discovery of the atomic nucleus in 1909, radioac-tivity was due to nuclear interactions with energies not just 1,000times larger than any Kelvin had ever observed in his laboratorybut 1,000,000 times larger. This was completely new physics thathad not been included in Kelvin’s models of the age of the sun orthe age of the earth, and it was responsible for the spectacularlywrong estimates he made of both ages.

12. Ibid., p. 49.



Kelvin did not realize that heat is continuously generated in-side the earth by the radioactive decay of uranium and othernaturally radioactive elements. Nor did he realize that enormousamounts of heat are being continuously produced in the core ofthe sun by the fusion of light elements like hydrogen nuclei, ulti-mately yielding helium nuclei. There is enough hydrogen in thesun to keep it shining at about the same level as now for billionsof years.This is “hot fusion,”and unlikecold fusion, it reallyworksand we owe our lives to it.

Lord Kelvin’s understanding of the earth’s age was limited byhis ignorance of nuclear interactions. The current debates aboutglobal climate change are complicated by our not understandingthe physics of the sun or of the earth’s atmosphere and oceanswell enough to dismiss them as major causes of climate changeon the earth. Dramatic climate changes like the medieval warmperiod at the time of the Viking settlements of Iceland and Green-land from about a.d. 900 to 1250, and the subsequent “little iceage,” from about 1250 to 1700, which led to extinction of theGreenland settlements, were certainly not caused by manmadechanges in the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.Subtle changes of the sun’s output and perhaps other poorly un-derstood factors must have been much more important in causingthose large climate changes than changing levels of atmosphericcarbon dioxide.

Global warming pressure groups would have the world be-lieve that catastrophic changes in the earth’s climate will occurwithout drastic limitations of carbon dioxide emissions——this inspite of the fact that the carbon dioxide levels in the earth’s at-mosphere have been much higher than today’s for much of geo-logical history. For example, as documented by the work of Ber-ner,13 atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations were some five

13. R. Berner, “The Rise of Plants and Their Effect on Weathering andAtmospheric CO2,” Science 276 (1997): 544–46.


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times higher than those now from about 300 million years to 30million years ago, a geological period of flourishing life on earth.For most of the time since the first fossils of advanced forms oflife appeared in the Cambrian era, some 600 million years ago,the earth’s climate has been somewhat warmer than at present,and the poles have had little or no ice cover. The exceptions weretwo ice ages, similar to the present one, the Gondwanian, about280 million years ago, and the Ordovician, about 430 million yearsago. Both ice ages coincided with unusually low levels of carbondioxide in the atmosphere, much as we have experienced at pres-ent. It is hard to understand hysteria over manmade increases incarbon dioxide levels that will not even bring atmospheric carbondioxide levels up to their norm for most of geological history, andwhich will probably help to prevent the next advance of ice sheets.So we should be very careful about taking actions that will cer-tainly cause great economic harm.

False biology prevailed for forty years in the Soviet Unionbecause Lysenko gained dictatorial control. His type of control——dependent upon prison, exile, and bullet——is not possible indemocratic societies, but the control of research funding enablesthose in political favor to restrict research that might underminepolitical opinions and positions. For instance, when I was theDirector of Energy Research of the Department of Energy in theearly 1990s I was amazed that the great bulk of federal funds forenvironmental studies from the DOE, NASA, EPA, and other fed-eral agencies flowed into research programs that reinforced amessage of imminent doom: humanity and planet earth devas-tated by global warming, pestilence, famine, and flood. I was par-ticularly disturbed by the ridiculous claims by then-Senator AlGore that recent NASA studies had shown that there was an“ozone hole over Kennebunkport.” I remember reacting angrilyto a briefing by Mr. Gore’s political ally, Bob Watson of NASA,when he used the same words, an “ozone hole over Kennebunk-



port,” to brief high-level members of the Bush administration inthe West Wing of the White House.

After the election of Bill Clinton and Al Gore in the fall of 1992,I was soon the only “holdover” from the previous Bush adminis-tration in the Department of Energy. There I worked with the newSecretary of Energy, Hazel O’Leary, to defend basic science in theDepartment of Energy. Although most political appointees arereplaced after the White House changes hands in a presidentialelection, it is not unusual for those occupying scientific posts toremain for some time in a new administration. However, after afew months, Secretary O’Leary called me in to say that I wasunacceptable to Al Gore and his environmental advisers, and thatI would have to be replaced. She was apologetic and graciousduring this discussion, and she did not elaborate on the exactreasons for Gore’s instructions.

The modern Greek poet Constantine Cavafy wrote a poem,“Things Ended,” which is worth remembering as we contemplateour supposedly dying planet:

Possessed by fear and suspicion,mind agitated, eyes alarmed,we desperately invent ways out,plan how to avoid the inevitabledanger that threatens us so terribly.Yet we’re mistaken, that’s not the danger ahead:the information was false(or we didn’t hear it, or didn’t get it right).Another disaster, one we never imagined,suddenly, violently, descends upon us,and finding us unprepared——there’s no time left——sweeps us away.14

14. C. P. Cavafy, Collected Poems, edited by George Savidis (Princeton,N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1992).


46 william happer

Summary

Politicized science is an inevitable part of the human condition,but society must strive to control it. Although history shows thatpoliticized science does much more damage in totalitarian soci-eties than in democracies, even democracies are sometimes stam-peded into doing very foolish and damaging things.

The Kyoto Treaty, based on assertions that mankind’s gener-ation of carbon dioxide will cause global warming, is an exampleof such a foolish and damaging thing. The effects of the KyotoTreaty, if the treaty is enacted, are likely to be more like those ofProhibition, than Lysenko’s biology. The demonizations of rumand carbon dioxide have much in common. In 1920, the U.S.Congress passed the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitutionof the United States. This amendment, which prohibited the man-ufacture, sale, or transport of alcoholic beverages, was intendedto rid the country of the accidents,disease, and violence associatedwith those beverages. It didn’t. It began a disastrous era thathelped organized crime to flourish as never before and nourishedcontempt for the law that has not entirely dissipated today. In1933, the Twenty-first Amendment repealed the EighteenthAmendment, the only time in history that an amendment to theU.S. Constitution has been repealed. Demonization of anything ishard to combat, since it is so easy to join the supposed high groundof virtue, while scorning those who go through the painstakingeffort of looking at the facts for themselves. This was why it wasso hard to stop the bandwagonof prohibitionor Lysenko’sbiology.

The same human motives that cause other problems in ourlives also drive extreme politicized science. As the examples hereshow, a common motive is the love of power and domination.This was clearly one of the most important motives for Lysenko.There is no surer way to build a powerful bureaucratic empire in



a democracy than to promote a supposed peril and then staff upa huge organization to combat it.

The intoxication of fame and glory is an important motive,especially for the scientists themselves. What bliss to be a saintedsavior of the planet, to be the provider of agricultural abundanceas communism dumps capitalism into the dustbin of history, orto be a new Prometheus, bringing the fire of cold fusion to des-perate humanity!

Greed is often a motive. The University of Utah was transfixedby the untold dollars they thought would flow to the inventors ofcold fusion. The Enron Corporation, a politically correct darlingof many environmental advocacy groups, was a stalwart sup-porter of the Kyoto Treaty to limit carbon dioxide emissions. En-ron envisaged huge profits from the trading of emission rights.Moreover, Enron’s holdings of natural gas, the fossil fuel thatemits the least carbon dioxide per BTU of combustion energy,would also greatly increase in value as the constraintsof the KyotoTreaty began to hurt the coal industry.

One can go down the list of deadly sins of almost any religion,and most can be found in politicized science. This should comeas no surprise, since scientists are as fallible as anyone else intheir personal lives. We recall that the first biblical mention ofscience (from “knowing” in Latin) occurs in the story of Eve’stemptation by the Serpent, “Eritis sicut Deus, scientes bonum etmalum; Thou shalt be as God, knowing good and evil.” Sciencehas always been associated with good and evil, and it will alwaysbe a struggle to be sure that the good prevails.


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Documents

Harmful Politicization of Science - Hoover Institution · ONE Harmful Politicization of Science WILLIAM HAPPER Politicization is inevitable when governments provide funding for science